It may be the one time in his National Hockey League career that Brady Tkachuk put himself in a sticky situation.<\/p>\n
The Ottawa Senators captain can now laugh about a prank that he tried to pull on alternate captain Claude Giroux a couple of years ago that went terribly wrong, but it was no laughing matter at the time.<\/p>\n
In his latest book, Certified Beauties, which went on sale Tuesday, TSN\u2019s James Duthie, an Ottawa native, revealed a story about the time Tkachuk tried to get payback on the veteran Giroux by cutting his sticks before a game against the St. Louis Blues a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n
A video trailer to promote the new book was posted on Duthie\u2019s social media accounts on Wednesday<\/a>, which showed Giroux breaking his stick trying to leave the Ottawa zone against the Blues and then having his new one break on the same shift.<\/p>\n \u201cClaude Giroux needs some new twigs,\u201d legendary TSN play-by-play broadcaster Gord Miller said in a highlight from the game shown in the trailer.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s going to grab a new stick, bat one out of the air in the neutral zone and break it again,\u201d added former NHL goalie Jamie McLennan, a colour analyst on TSN\u2019s regional broadcast of Senators games.<\/p>\n The second time it happened was the moment that Tkachuk realized that Giroux was using a batch of three sticks that had been intentionally cut, so that they\u2019d jokingly break on him during the morning skate.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Tkachuk had other things on his mind that day and completely forgot to make sure the sticks were changed out before the puck was dropped that night at the Canadian Tire Centre.<\/p>\n Initially, an upset Giroux thought it was St. Louis blueliner Brayden Schenn, a former teammate from the Philadelphia Flyers, who had cut the sticks intentionally.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, when it happened, I thought it was the other team. I remember we were playing St Louis and I thought it was Brayden Schenn. I just started yelling at him, thinking it was him,\u201d Giroux said with a smile, before the Senators face the Flyers on Thursday night at home.<\/p>\n By that point, Tkachuk already had told the club\u2019s equipment managers \u2014 John Forget, Ian Cox, Alex Menezes and Bram Karp \u2014 to remove Giroux\u2019s third stick from the rack or it would happen again.<\/p>\n \u201cBrady was beside me on the bench when I was yelling (at Schenn) and he told me it was him. I didn\u2019t believe him at the time,\u201d Giroux recalled. \u201cLet\u2019s just say I wasn\u2019t too happy about it for a little bit, but a few months later we were able to laugh about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Hijinks in the locker room are something that are typical in every NHL city and, oftentimes, Giroux is the culprit behind the prank and not the one getting pranked.<\/p>\n